Vocal Voices

Today there was a 7.3 magnitude earthquake offshore which caused a 2/3ft tsunami on the same shore.

Now NHK, the national broadcaster, has said that the cooling for #3 reactor has gone offline. Are they doing the same thing all over again? The last I heard there were virtually unprotected cooling pools arranged along the site in temporary containment vessels. The last I heard this was even more dangerous than the original situation if it was hit by another tsunami.

I guess we'll only have to wait and see but their record so far is poor in terms of telling the truth.

Ah, yes, the media was all over this like a rash as soon as Fukushima was mentioned, as though it was the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant that was hit.

I saw the first reports on the Internet at about 10 pm, especially the picture of the Japanese TV channel. There was not much to report at the time so it all turned speculative: 7.4 earthquake; tsunami warning; 3m high waves; take to the hills; run for your lives!

It now turns out that the quake was 6.9 and that Fukushima really meant the prefecture (county) and that the pumps at Daiichi closed down automatically and back-up pumps were used.

The whole thing has now dropped off the news radar.

Well they did say 3ft, 1 meter. Also they did say the cooling pumps had shut down on the spent fuel cooling. No more info.

Of course the spent fuel is a bigger hazar4d than the fuel which went China Syndrome during the 2011 event, as there is a hell of a lot more of it and it's not in a containment vessel. It's spread out in long lines in temporary containment tanks at ground level. Which is a bit of an issue.

Hopefully this has raised awareness that future quakes might happen and that they put a few meters of berm between the pools and the sea.

The main pumps going offline is certainly a bit of an issue even if the backups took over. Because it was the pumps going down on the containment pools in the first place that caused the very real risk of the spent fuel going up in the first two weeks back in 2011.

They totally lied their way through that one.

OK found a new article.

So it was the Dacini plant which had the failure in the cooling pool pumps.

It seems they have created 45 foot berms and embedded the backup generators in a secure waterproof enclosure.

It's probably the best they can do, but it may still not be enough if we get another 8.x magnitude quake offshore.

Yes, but this time what the media did was put 'Fukushima' and 'tsunami' together to create a scare story: 2+2=2011.

It is known as 'Crying Wolf!' and if it continues there really will be a disaster, come the day.