Japan's Nukes Following Earthquake

[navynukedoc]

C-5 would be overkill. In any case, it's irrelevant since there is no runway at the plant. 

The dimensions are what I was referring to not the weight, although I know not too many driveable generators could weigh as much as an Abrams, right?

In my original post I did disclaim if they had a big enough runway to handle the load and length of the Galaxy. And if you flew 4 of them at once I think a Galaxy would fair better in fuel and flight hours versus 2 or 4 trips with a Hercules, wouldn't it?

[HydroDave63]

In my original post I did disclaim if they had a big enough runway to handle the load and length of the Galaxy. And if you flew 4 of them at once I think a Galaxy would fair better in fuel and flight hours versus 2 or 4 trips with a Hercules, wouldn't it?

Either way, it has to traverse a road capable of supporting the heavy transporters. Fortunately, the Critical Path of road repairs prevailed, and that's how the EDGs were delivered (much to Loffy Muffin's dismay of not going the 1 Mole-of-2KW generators-wired-in-parallel mode)

Since we're now down the route of AirForceLoadmaster.com^TM... the logical route of future deliveries of large, heavy equipment once the spraying from barges evolutions are done, would be the same method as how the coastal plants received the vessels at construction: Large shallow draft barges.

Perhaps then we can debate whether to use LCAC's vs. Russian "Zubr" class hovercraft vs. car ferries

[navynukedoc]

We should be able to agree that PACOM had the ability to get EDG's in there,...

All the C in C had to say was, "Make it so Number One",....

He didn't, and the buck stops there,....

Starting to pick up on your affection for Obama, but we will save that for PolySci.

I am just glad they are able to get the pumps working again and not seeing the situation get worse.

[namlive]

While the article defines a very tight (and miss leading) objective  to address, it totally misses the impacts of a failed MOX fuel cell that a reader might expect from the "American Nuclear Society".  Now, what would that be? 
At what point does Japan Prime Minster Fire these TEPCO clowns?  What does it take?  It looks like they wanted to quit and walk off the job two weeks ago, and their actions show conclusively they are no where near being up for the task at hand.  The are using unqualified personnel for dangerous clean up and wasting the efforts the work force that is volunteering blindly following a sense of patriotic duty.   
The PM should have accepted the resignation proposal from Fukushima NP and transitioned Emergency Response management to GE-Hitachi. Or Areva.  Or ten random guys at the airport. There is no indication T+2 weeks into this that their is any leadership, management, or central control in place.  What is the plan?  Answer, there is no plan.  You are looking at it.
A quick look under the hood of this TEPCO operation shows why:  a history of coverups, bribes, forged maintenance inspections, parts failure, deaths, rad releases.  And that is just what we know about with government officials and oversight in their back pocket.  

TEPCO or PECO?  For a point of reference, at TMI we would sample 40 ml of reactor coolant into shielded containers that would read close to 100 mr/hr. This was a year after the accident. The coolant had roughly the same Cs-137 as Sr-90, about 30 uc/ml if my old memory serves me correctly.

[matthew.b]

100mr/hr at the sample or on the outside of the shielding?

[Loffy Muffin]

Helo in 2MW would be ridiculously easy.

The EDG is on a skid, made up of components.  It would take me 2 hours to disassembly the skid, and 2-3 hours to reassemble.  I would disassemble the skid even if I had a russian  Miv 26  chopper so that I could easily move the power in position where I needed it. 
The plant seemed to put too much into the running the cable.  It seems to be a failure so far. The pumps are still being run by diesel generators (and where fire truck pumpers before that).  Running those cables restricts where you tap into and exposed people to high rad.  It might have been ok for a backup plan, but as the only plan it is a failure. Took too long.  You need power before you can even trouble shoot the system. The fight doesn't even start until you have power.  A break down in basic critical problem solving. Should have set the time constraint as 24 hours, that would have taken "pull the cable 2500 ft" off the table.
Getting all the power I need is the easy part of the problem.  I figure 12 hours to located, stage, and line up resources.  12 hour to get the first 2MW for each plant available.  24 total.  Then in a day or two I would not be power limited.   The hard part would then start-trying to cobble together what works, what don't, get parts, fabricate, install, test.  Of course, they get power in there within 24 hours they don't have high rad and explosion damage.  They made a workable problem a complete disaster by failure to act.  +5billion dollar clean up Fission products in the ocean.  And 5GW off the grid that needs to be replaced.

I would rate getting power complexity as 1 star out of 5.
One 2000kw detroit diesel gen, skid mounted:

http://www.dieselgeneratorsmiami.com/generalpower/650-kw-to-2000-kw-diesel-generators/218/2000-kw-diesel-generator-2500-kva-60-hz-three-phase-sdmo-x2000uii-detroit-mtu-diesel-generator-open-skid-mounted-version.html


The diesel is 6 tons. (I can disassemble this to the crank/block if needed)
The generator is 4 tons. ( I can further separate the stator - rotor-if needed.)
The skid is 2-3 tons
The Exciter/controls/cooler is 2-3 tons.
Total is 15 tons.
Each medium lift chinook chopper is rated oh..10 tons.   My weight limit is the diesel. Barely over 50% capacity.   

Anyway, its better then TEPCO's "cops with water canon" plan that got rolled out after 8 days.

[roadhp]

"Always with the negative waves, Moriarity, always with the negative waves."  Oddball from Kelly's Heroes

[chimmike]

CNN is reporting today that radioactivity has been found in milk in 2 states.

When does this now get recognized as it should be: much more severe than TMI?

And when does the U.S. gov't get involved and say "you need to get this radiation leakage under wraps now, because it's travelling thousands of miles and contaminating our soil.....and we're more than 2 weeks after the fact."

Do we have any people over there working with the engineers?

Have they tried using robots to access highly radioactive areas to see if in fact there is a leak from the main containment? Seems to be a lot of guessing on their part from what I'm reading in spotty news reports.

I have a 10 month old daughter, so I don't want her getting anything any more contaminated than the natural environment :/

[Nuclear NASCAR]

Would that be this report?: http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/03/31/radiation.us/index.html?hpt=T2#

"Results from screening samples of milk taken in the past week in Spokane, Washington, and in San Luis Obispo County, California, detected radioactive iodine at a level 5,000 times lower than the limit set by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, officials said."

"This morning I spoke with the chief advisers for both the EPA and the FDA and they confirmed that these levels are miniscule and are far below levels of public health concern, including for infants and children," Gregoire said in a statement.

"According to them, a pint of milk at these levels would expose an individual to less radiation than would a five-hour airplane flight."

Take it all in context and it's not quite as alarming is it? 

[yalikedags?]

Take it all in context and it's not quite as alarming is it? 




[/quote]

Take it out of context and the virtues become vices, the vices become virtues and facts get cross-ways, side-ways, back-ways, etc..... Then the ignoramists are wiggin' out b/c they keep their face glued to the newspaper and listening to what the magic box has to say instead of researching it themselves.

Good post

[PJMcG]

In context and QUANTIFIABLE information. 

Tell me what the contamination levels are.
Tell me what the radiation levels are.
Tell me what specific damage has been sustained. 

Breathless reporters babbling things like, "There could be a full meltdown and leaking radiation levels are ten billion times normal!"  Nobody knows what that truly means, but it hypes the situation and gets viewers to sell advertisements and the media wheel keeps spinning.  And what is the normal reading anyway?  Ten billion times less than minimum detectable activity, is still less than MDA.

[Marlin]

Take it all in context and it's not quite as alarming is it?

Yes, but does that sell an anti-Nuke agenda or increase ratings for News outlets???

[Marlin]

Not choices I would like to make. Check out the interactive graphics tab.
**********************************

At the heart of the day's moves lies a calculated choice between bad and worse: To meet their goal of keeping reactors cool enough to forestall catastrophe, officials appear willing to risk letting some highly radioactive water spill out of vents that are positioned some 50 to 70 yards from the sea.


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704471904576229854179642220.html

[playswithairplanes]

No not really.  With the C130 you can LAPES (Low Altitude Parachute Extraction System).  I'm not sure if they still do this.  It has killed a number of crews due to the load not coming off the ship even with the parachute deployed.

No strip ... No problem.

Um, dude look at the pictures of the area around the plant... there is not sufficient space to do some LAPES kind of deal.  Yes, they still do it. Though the preferable method is parachute from a higher altitude.

They Trucked the damn thing in, OK? It's the only way. Probably the same route they used to bring in the high voltage power lines.

To LM,
The MAX payload on the CH-47D is 21000 lbs, but it has about zero range at that point. In order to get sufficient range you have to reduce the payload. We use curves called Payload-Range curves to calculate this. At a range of about 20 miles, the payload is down to ~18000 lbs. So, unless your superwhamadyne plan involved breaking the payload up into multiple trips, your out of luck. Your claim of "it's just 50% above" max payload is, on it's face ludicrous. Aircraft aren't something you can just "go to 110%". If you are over weight BAD things happen.
Here's a video of an overloaded Russian Mil MI-14
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmDkK2Q1CIo

[MacGyver]

Um, dude look at the pictures of the area around the plant... there is not sufficient space to do some LAPES kind of deal.  Yes, they still do it. Though the preferable method is parachute from a higher altitude.

They Trucked the damn thing in, OK? It's the only way. Probably the same route they used to bring in the high voltage power lines.

I don't recall making the advice of using a/c.  Just offering a/c options and clarifications.  A single helo would be a good choice but with the current issues that is really out of the question (range v payload due to position of carriers and bases).

A good alternative is a hoover craft.

But, just to let you know.  They have tested Herc's on aircraft carriers.

Article on the testing of a C130 on an aircraft carrier.


So if you have a road you have a strip of useable area for LAPES.  Not that I am suggesting that is what should have been done.

[HAIRDUDE]

I was at Vogtle when that happened. Not as big a deal as they made it out to be. Truck going into the transformer yard to refuel the backup generator hit a transformer. Wackiness ensued. It was all over in a few hours. Most of us "essential" personnel stayed on site through the whole thing.

[playswithairplanes]

Getting back on topic. Todays IAEA report out has surface contamination reports. Seems pretty bad in some areas, which I assume are closest to the plant. 
http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html

[Sun Dog]

Todays IAEA report out has surface contamination reports. Seems pretty bad in some areas, which I assume are closest to the plant. 

What a shock!

[namlive]

100mr/hr at the sample or on the outside of the shielding?

If I recall that was an unshielded reading. I don't remember any Hi-Rad control lugging that thing around in my pocket. Back pocket, of course.

In looking at the TEPCO own reports and Wiki, it appears they are doing simple GeLi analysis on contamination/sea water samples etc. One of the isotopes was Y-91, which means you have Sr-91. Now a nuclear accident is not going to produce Sr-91 without producing Sr-90. We have yet to hear about the Sr-90 isotope, which at TMI was produced in nearly the same abundance as Cs-137. I really don't think these people know what they are doing.

[hamsamich]

yeah if puddles are reading 100 R I don't really need to know what the contamination levels are.  WOW.

[cjfern]

I have only read about half of the postings on this topic, but I was going blind reading it on my I-pod.  Can I ask some questions.  It was reported the workers (heroes) did not have any way to take a shower.  How do they de-contaminate?
Concerned about the ocean.  If the contamination gets into the water and goes up the food chain, will this not increase the spread of the radiation, leading to the supposed killing of the ocean? 
Regarding the farmers who are not leaving the area around the F plant, obviously they are concerned over their livestock, cows do need to be milked.  Will these people be able to go out into the public, will they be a hazard to be around?  This does not even address the animals and what will happen to them.  I can't even wrap my mind around that. I am not a Nuke worker, live in a state without nuclear power plants, somewhat a tree hugger, but I believe Nuclear energy is necessary, I enjoy everything electricity brings me.  Thank you for the info I have found on this site about this tragedy in Japan.

[cjfern]

More questions.  Is it true that the ports have a lot of sunken ships and nothing could be delivered that way anyway, and the shore infrastructure is destroyed as well. 
All of this water that is running off or accumulating in tunnels, how is that water decontaminated?.
Are any of you taking any precautions here in the good ole USA, are you eating the veggies and fruits from California, are you walking in the rain? 

[dave in St. Louis]

Concerned about the ocean.  If the contamination gets into the water and goes up the food chain, will this not increase the spread of the radiation, leading to the supposed killing of the ocean?

If this http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Castle_Bravo_Blast.jpg didn't kill the ocean, what is happening in Japan won't either.

[playswithairplanes]

Are any of you taking any precautions here in the good ole USA, are you eating the veggies and fruits from California, are you walking in the rain? 

No. Nor should anyone be bothering to. The reported levels in the US are barely detectable, and certainly not a cause for alarm. 

As for walking in the rain. I live in Seattle... we can't avoid it.

You should be more worried about the Mercury spewed out by Coal fired power plants, not to mention the Sulfur compounds that lead to acid rain.

[PJMcG]

Hey PlaysWithAirplanes,

Don't forget the mercury from compact fluorescent bulbs as well - the horror!

My incandescent bulb turned off consumes less mc-squared than their CFs do when they're on.

PJ