ROV #7--Japan Nuclear Crisis

Do not recommend this diary. Please recommend the Mothership instead.

This is another clearinghouse diary for discussion and commentary about the ongoing nuclear disaster(s) in Japan. Previous diaries can be found listed in the Mothership.

Please be kind to Kossacks with low bandwith and avoid video and photos, but any info and updates, from whatever sources are available to you, are what these diaries are all about. This means you, Gooserock.

Visit the Mothership for information on donations, best places to get reliable updates, and so on.

A few links to media coverage:

Reference Information

Many thanks to boatsie who started the mothership process and provided much initial information from her diary on the subject, "we are assuming melt down has occurred" & upgraded to 9!

Crowdsourcing/Crisis Mapping/Google Earth EngineGoogle Crisis Response

Live Streaming:

NHK Japan Live (in English translation): NHK Japan Live

Al Jazeera Japan Live: Al Jazeera Japan Live

France24 Live: France24 Live

Twitter – Real Time Updates:

IAEA

WFP

    #earthquake: Twitter #earthquake

    #japan: Twitter #japan

    #tsunami: Twitter #tsunami    #EQJP #japanearthquake, #JPQuake, #japaneq, #japantsunami, #ynwa, #japaneq

The Five Star Seneca Doane DKos disaster preparedness primer

Link to a document about how the nuclear fuel rods are stored

ROV #7 quick news updates--

5:22pm

Joi Ito blogs about how the change of location of workers at Fukushima plant was misreported as 'evacuation' -as it simply got lost in translation - here is Joi's blog post

"This morning at 8:30AM March 16 JST Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano held a press conference to talk about the smoke billowing from Reactor 3 at Fukushima.

"At this press conference, he explained that the radiation levels spiked and that TEPCO staff would be temporarily moved to "a safe region". He probably should have said "location" as Hiroko Tabuchi pointed out to me.

"The foreign press misunderstood this and started reporting that the TEPCO staff had evacuated the reactor causing a broad panic. Hiroko Tabuchi of the New York Times  contacted the Nuclear Industry Safety Agency and TEPCO directly to clarify and confirmed that they had not in fact been evacuated, but just moved temporarily to a safer area during the spike.

"Jun Seita then reported that as of 11:30AM, NHK was reporting that the staff were back to work.

"The frustrating thing was that once this corrosive and sensational misinformation was in the main stream media via the wires, it was very hard to get them to fix it.

"Al Jazeera was the first that I saw to edit their news story to reflect that indeed they had not been evacuated.

"At the same press conference Edano accidentally said 1000 millisievert instead of 1000 microsieverts causing further confusion in the media."

src--Al Jazeera liveblog--nb

Status of quake-stricken reactors at Fukushima nuclear power plants

TOKYO, March 16, Kyodo

The following is the known status as of Wednesday afternoon of each of the six reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant and the four reactors at the Fukushima No. 2 plant, both in Fukushima Prefecture, which were crippled by Friday's magnitude 9.0 earthquake and the ensuing tsunami.

Fukushima No. 1 plant

-- Reactor No. 1 - Cooling failure, partial melting of core, vapor vented, building damaged Saturday by hydrogen explosion, seawater being pumped in.

-- Reactor No. 2 - Cooling failure, seawater being pumped in, fuel rods fully exposed temporarily, vapor vented, building damaged Monday by blast at Reactor No. 3, damage to containment vessel on Tuesday, potential meltdown feared.

-- Reactor No. 3 - Cooling failure, partial melting of core feared, vapor vented, seawater being pumped in, building damaged Monday by hydrogen explosion, high-level radiation measured nearby on Tuesday, plume of smoke observed Wednesday, damage to containment vessel likely.

-- Reactor No. 4 - Under maintenance when quake struck, fire Tuesday possibly caused by hydrogen explosion at pool holding spent fuel rods, pool water level not observed, fire observed Wednesday at building housing reactor, no water poured in to cool pool.

-- Reactor No. 5, No. 6 - Under maintenance when quake struck, temperature slightly rising in spent fuel pool.

Fukushima No. 2 plant

-- Reactor No. 1, No. 2, No. 4 - Cooling failure, then cold shutdown.

-- Reactor No. 3 - Cold shutdown.

==Kyodo

Also see this pdf link from JAIF for Fukushima status updates. H/t woolie. This info looks like it's being reposted on the Wikipedia page.

Kyodo news also reporting "26,000 have been rescued from quake-hit area".