UPDATE: Technicians are battling to cool the reactor following a blast at the building housing reactor 1 on Saturday. A second explosion would still be unlikely to breach the nuclear reactor itself – BBC.
3 people have been “affected” by radiation from Tokyo Electric Power’s power plant, Nikkei has reported.
However, Kyodo News cited Fukushima Prefecture as saying that because the radiation was detected on their clothes, there was no immediate need to decontaminate the three people who were evacuated from within a three mile radius around the plant.
Power company confirms four people injured at plant.
Core is now being cooled. NHK News reporting that several employees at the Fukushima plant have been injured at the plant, no details yet or whether any incident is directly related to any meltdown. An explosion has been heard. NB This is not and could never be a nuclear explosion. Two radioactive substances, cesium and radioactive iodine, have been detected near the Number One reactor at the Fukushima plant. But, that’s not leakage, rather from safety venting.
As far away as 60 kilometers there is evacuation activity, although 10 km (no longer 3 km) was marked as the safety radius from the plant. At times of such disasters there is a lot of misinformation around, says Japanese diplomat. Safety radius was simply a precautionary measure.
The world media is repeatedly alerting us to the possibility of “nuclear meltdown” at a power plant in Japan. Nuclear meltdown is not a term recognised by the International Atomic Energy Agency nor by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission although the phenomenon does colloquially refer to the melting of the radioactive core of a nuclear power plant when cooling systems fail. The industry and regulators do use the phrase – Core Melt Accident.
Although everyone is concerned by the possibility of a nuclear leak, it should be noted that although there have been two meltdowns at American civil nuclear power plants in history (the Fermi 1 experimental fast breeder reactor and Three Mile Island accident). Both incidents were dramatic but neither led to any deaths nor serious injuries. Indeed, there have been no deaths or serious injuries reportedly from radiation leaked from a Western civil nuclear power plant.
If there is no contamination even with reactor damaged from quake it would be an opportunity to educate the public regarding nuclear power safety.
Wholly agree David. Although I think many people decided a long time ago to damn nuclear.
Maybe no injuries or death in “civil” nuclear facilities in the West, but there certainly were some in Idaho Falls in the 1950s. I guess that plant was considered either military or experimental or both, and an accident there did result in at least one gruesome death by rod explosion.
The nuclear industry has been demonized in the press to the point that the public has bought on to it. We need to keep reminding the news outlets that they need to investigate these accidents until they really understand the situation before they start scaring the uninformed public with sensational reports.
Just for the record, the original title of this article was aimed squarely at the nuclear scaremongers in the media who used highly emotive language to needlessly cause undue nuclear alarm at the beginning of the disaster. I cannot believe the bile with which one sensitive soul addressed me on Facebook, his sensibilities having apparently been offended by the title, as if those who are suffering the tragedy in Japan would care about my commentary on this blog. Contrast that with the doom and gloom doled out by the tabloids that has done nothing to allay public fears that chemical explosions at a nuclear reactor plant can somehow be the equivalent of a nuclear explosion. They cannot.
Anyway, the correspondent maturely told me that he would no longer follow my page. Sad.
I suggest someone look into the effective use of “Bleed and Feed”. According to a computer modeling program done by MIT the chance of the success of this method when the cooling system of a boiling water reactor using high pressure steam is a little over 50 percent. I am a newspaper reporter with an BS in Chemistry.
Don’t worry, you’re excused I’m a chemist too…
Hello, Btw, is it radiation causing material’s particles or radiation from such material which is a long term threat to health?
Further, can it be possible that Japan’s earthquake followed by Tsunami was as a result of pre-movement of earth’s axis instead of anticipated post movement?
Not quite sure what you’re asking Kumar. Direct exposure to a radioactive material can cause harm whether that’s from an alpha, beta or gamma emitter. Fundamentally, they can all ionise atoms/molecules which then initiates damaging chemistry.
I don’t think the earth’s axis has anything to do with the recent plate tectonics that led to the earthquake and subsequent tsunami.