Attempt has failed due to severe damage to electric infrastructure within the plant...in short, hooking up the electric to a blown-up building does not make blown-up and flooded equipment start working again.

Imagine: Huge thunderstorm, your basement floods, a tree falls, lands on your house, your house partly collapses into the basement, and the electric feed is pulled off the side of the house by the falling tree. Storm passes, now you're cold, so you jury-rig a cable to generator connect to the power lines that were connected to your house. Your oil burner won't function, no matter how much electric is there...
Now add high radiation at the site of pumps, increase the size of the cables needed to connect electricity to the point that you need heavy equipment just to MOVE the wire into place...now add the fact that there are no roads to drive the heavy equipment and the beach where you can park a generator is covered in 40' of smashed houses and dead bodies and it's 500 yards of water between the plant and the generator...

I haven't seen this news or the US Embassy evacuation order on CNN yet. Looks like things are still sliding downhill.

The thing is--and I'm sure the Japanese are facing the same quandry--how do you actually move these people? Probably one reason why the Japanese haven't increased their evacuation zone is because the people are having trouble moving without gasoline, and with all the destruction, they're already backed up against a wall as far as where these people can go in an island nation.

I've heard these interviews with Americans and many are stuck where they are and wouldn't be able to evacuate even if they wanted to without gasoline for cars. In these rural areas, there are usually not that many buses available since so many people drive in those places.

Earlier quote on this thread: "Gregory Jaczko, the chairman of the commission, said in Congressional testimony that the commission believed that all the water in the spent fuel pool at the No. 4 reactor of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station had boiled dry, leaving fuel rods stored there completely exposed. As a result, he said, “We believe that radiation levels are extremely high, which could possibly impact the ability to take corrective measures.”

There has to be a good reason why they are saying this. I really seriously doubt that the chairman of the NRC would say something like this - without having some hard data. Such data might come from careful studies of satellite photo's, for example. But notice that they are still only saying that a safe exclusion zone is about 50 miles around the reactor.

I also saw a report this afternoon that implied that thre is a small group of nuclear planty engineers in Japan who may have received radiation doses that are much higher than most of the other workers. But no firm confirmation yet.

UPDATE: With these latest comments from US officials ...

"The water served to both cool the uranium fuel and shield it. But once the uranium fuel was no longer covered by water, its zirconium cladding that encases the fuel rods heated, generating hydrogen, said Robert Alvarez, senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and a former official with the Department of Energy. That caught fire, resulting in a situation that is "very, very serious," he told CNN. He said the next solution may involve nuclear plant workers having to take heroic acts. Asked to be more specific, he said, "This is a situation where people may be called in to sacrifice their lives. ... It's very difficult for me to contemplate that but it's, it may have reached that point."

Which gets to the point of what I was saying earlier.
In odrer to fix this situation - it could involve a suicide mission.
I bet there's some earnest and heartfelt pondering going on with those power plant workers now.



other Pete

Luftansa and Alitalia flights to or from Tokyo are being diverted elsewhere, such as Osaka. Fortunately, so far, no radiation has been found on their planes.

The bulk of the foreigners in Japan are closest to Tokyo, so if the situation deteriorates and other carriers do the same and more foreigners want to leave the country, that is going to be a massive headache.

The Tokyo domestic airport (Haneda) is already full of Japanese trying to escape to western parts of Japan, so adding an extra influx of foeigners at Haneda trying to also go to those same cities will result in a huge bottleneck.

Trains are certainly an option to Osaka and elsewhere, but due to the electricity cutbacks, I believe that trains heading west are alredy running on reduced schedules. Just getting to the airport can be a challenge due to the rotating blackouts and reduced train schedules.

This is the type of situation where advanced remotely controlled robots and aerial vehicles would come in handy. I guess there is no such technology that has been built and tested for this scenario.

I talked to my friend in Japan and he said traces of radioactivity is getting into the drinking water and asked me if I have anything to solve this problem. I have desalinization equipment, carbon and UV filters but I do not have a clue how to clean up (if it is even possible) radio contaminated water. Collecting rain water and the ocean from where he is at is too dangerous, does anyone have any ideas how to clean up radioactive contaminated water? Right now the traces are so small it's within a safe range but the fears are it will get worse.
Thanks

I've wondered the same thing and have read a couple things. Robots apparently aren't nimble enough to navigate the interiors of the reactor, with all the hatches, crawlspaces, piping, ladders, etc. They also don't do well in radiation.

I did read something early this morning about the DoD using a Predator drone to get some closer aerial shots but I haven't heard anything else. It's possible that those shots are what the NRC used to conclude that the spent fuel pool at reactor 4 had run dry. Either that, or maybe one of our billion dollar spy satellites is being used.

I'm not an expert, but based on what I've read the water itself cannot be radioactive, rather it's suspended particles that emit radiation. Remove the particles and the water becomes safe, or at the very least a whole lot more safe than it was.

Distillation might be the safest bet.

One of my thoughts is flocculating might be helpful. I've been researching it lately, and from what I read of some backpackers it can possibly be as simple as getting some alum from the store, stirring and letting it settle correctly, and then pouring the water off. It seems like it'd remove stuff that normal filters don't, as I've been researching it with regards to expedient fluoride filtration--carbon does not remove fluoride from water, but flocculants do. I'm not familiar with all the reasoning behind this but it might be something to look in to with regards to removing radioactive ions.

I'd still probably want to distill it if at all possible. I'm eager to hear others' thoughts on this matter.

Thanks Ann, I'll look in to that as well, I have read anything from nano filtration to bacteria to take the ions out but no solutions, only promised upcoming technologies. I had gotten help from Sue at Cone Instruments to help get dosimeters to them over there and they have KI (Potassium iodide)finally over there now. It is kinda of ironic that I live within 100 miles of a nuclear power plant in Fla. and have a lot of equipment from floods to winter, etc.. but absolutely nothing for radiation. I figured if something went that bad, I probably wouldn't be alive to worry about it anyway. I may have to look in to KI pills down the road and a dosimeter after this matter. Our Crystal River plant is not the most kept up plant.

Arney said ... "I did read something early this morning about the DoD using a Predator drone to get some closer aerial shots"

Ahhhh - suddenly the light dawns. Good job, Arney. I couldn't figure out what the Japanese were asking for when they requested US military help. Now it all makes sense. But this also means that the statements by the NRC chairman are indeed based on factual observations of the site. It cannot be a good thing if the coolant pool at Reactor #4 has completely dried up. The Japanese need to replace this water.

other Pete