japanese crisis

JapanMarch 11, 2011

JapanPopulation:

126,475,664

Slightly smaller than California

10th largest population in the world

98.5% are ethnic Japanese

Japanese EarthquakesWhy was Japan's March 11 earthquake so big?

One answer is the large size of the fault rupture as well as the speed at which the Pacific Plate is continuously thrusting beneath Japan

Japanese EarthquakesMagnitude, according to USGS: 9.0

Speed at which the Pacific Plate is smashing into the Japanese island arc: 8.9 centimeters (3.5 inches) per year

Speed at which the San Andreas Fault in California is slipping: about 4 centimeters per year

Japanese EarthquakesTop speed of a tsunami over the open ocean:

About 800 kilometers per hour

Normal cruising speed of a jetliner: 800 kilometers per hour

Length of warning time Sendai residents had before tsunami hit: eight to 10 minutes

Japanese EarthquakesNumber of confirmed aftershocks: 401

Worldwide average annual number of earthquakes over magnitude 6.0: 150

Years since an earthquake of this magnitude has hit the plate boundary of Japan: 1,200

Japanese Earthquakes

What does an earthquake cause for an an island?

TsunamiJapanese for “harbor wave”

A series of water waves caused by the displacement of a large volume of a body of water, usually an ocean

Tsunamis are a frequent occurrence in Japan; approximately 195 events have been recorded.

2004 TsunamiThe 2004 Indian

Ocean earthquake was an undersea megathrust earthquake that occurred on Sunday, December 26, 2004, with an epicentre off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia.

2004 Tsunami

2004 TsunamiThe earthquake that

generated the great Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 is estimated to have released the energy of 23,000 Hiroshima-type atomic bombs

2004 TsunamiBy the end of the

day more than 150,000 people were dead or missing and millions more were homeless in 11 countries, making it perhaps the most destructive tsunami in history.

2004 TsunamiThe earthquake was the result of the sliding of

the portion of the Earth's crust known as the India plate under the section called the Burma plate.

The process has been going on for millennia, one plate pushing against the other until something has to give.

The result on December 26 was a rupture the USGS estimates was more than 600 miles

2004 TsunamiThe Indian Ocean tsunami traveled as much as

3,000 miles (nearly 5,000 kilometers) to Africa, arriving with sufficient force to kill people and destroy property.

The Indian Ocean tsunami caused waves as high as 50 feet (15 meters) in some places, according to news reports

2004 TsunamiWithin hours killer

waves radiating from the earthquake zone slammed into the coastline of 11 Indian Ocean countries, snatching people out to sea, drowning others in their homes or on beaches, and demolishing property from Africa to Thailand.

But doesn’t Japan get earthquakes and tsunamis all the time?

Daiichi Nuclear ReactorDaiichi Nuclear Power Station station has 6

nuclear reactors on site that are all of the type known as Boiling Water Reactors.

They are an older design that does not have a containment building but rather a containment vessel which holds the reactor core of rods and water that is used to generate steam. They were all built in the 1970’s.

Daiichi Nuclear Reactor

Daiichi Nuclear ReactorThe problem at Daiichi Unit 1 is that the pumps

that circulate the water have shut down initially due to a lack of power.

Since the reactor is a “single loop” there the water around the core has continued to heat up. Even with the control rods in, the reactor stays very hot for at least a couple of days.

Nuclear PowerNuclear power plants harness the thermal energy

released from nuclear fission (neutron splitting)

Fission splits the atom into two or more smaller nuclei with kinetic energy (known as fission products) and also releases gamma radiation and free neutrons.

This nuclear chain reaction can be controlled by using neutron poisons and neutron moderators to change the portion of neutrons that will go on to cause more fissions.

Nuclear Fission

Nuclear PowerA cooling system removes heat from the

reactor core and transports it to another area of the plant, where the thermal energy can be harnessed to produce electricity or to do other useful work.

Typically the hot coolant will be used as a heat source for a boiler, and the pressurized steam from that boiler will power one or more steam turbine driven electrical generators.

Nuclear Power Plant

Nuclear Power

Nuclear PowerThe fuel rods will spend about 3 operational

cycles (typically 6 years total now) inside the reactor, generally until about 3% of their uranium has been fissioned, then they will be moved to a spent fuel pool where the short lived isotopes generated by fission can decay away.

Nuclear PowerAfter about 5 years in a spent fuel pool the

spent fuel is radioactively and thermally cool enough to handle, and it can be moved to dry storage casks or reprocessed.

Daiichi Nuclear ReactorWhy didn’t they just re-route power

from another power station?

Daiichi Nuclear ReactorThe plant’s operator, Tokyo

Electric Power, repeated efforts to inject seawater into the reactor failed, causing water levels inside the reactor’s containment vessel to fall and exposing its fuel rods.

After what at first appeared to be a successful bid to refill the vessel, water levels again dwindled, this time to critical levels, exposing the rods almost completely.

Were they prepared?Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s disaster plans greatly

underestimated the scope of a potential accident at its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, calling for only one stretcher, one satellite phone and 50 protective suits in case of emergencies.

Were they prepared?Disaster-response documents for Fukushima

Daiichi, examined by The Wall Street Journal, also contain few guidelines for obtaining outside help, providing insight into why Japan struggled to cope with a nuclear crisis after an earthquake and tsunami devastated the facility.

Were they prepared?The disaster plans, approved by Japanese regulators,

offer guidelines for responding to smaller emergencies and outline in detail how to back up key systems in case of failure.

Yet the plans fail to envision the kind of worst-case scenario that befell Japan: damage so extensive that the plant couldn't respond on its own or call for help from nearby plants.

There are no references to Tokyo firefighters, Japanese military forces or U.S. equipment, all of which the plant operators eventually relied upon to battle their overheating reactors.

Has this happened before?

ChernobylNuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986

at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Ukrainian SSR (now Ukraine). It is considered the worst nuclear power plant accident in history, and it is the only one classified as a level 7 event on the International Nuclear Event Scale.

ChernobylThere was a sudden power output surge, and

when an emergency shutdown was attempted, a more extreme spike in power output occurred, which led to a reactor vessel rupture and a series of explosions.

ChernobylThe resulting fire sent a plume of highly

radioactive smoke fallout into the atmosphere and over an extensive geographical area.

The plume drifted over large parts of the western Soviet Union and Europe.

From 1986 to 2000, 350,400 people were evacuated and resettled from the most severely contaminated areas of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine.

Chernobyl

Where did the Japanese purchase the nuclear reactors?

But GE surely hasn’t had this happen before with one of their nuclear reactors?

Three Mile IslandThe plant is widely

known for having been the site of the most significant accident in United States commercial nuclear energy, on March 28, 1979, when TMI-2 suffered a partial meltdown.

Three Mile IslandOn March 28, 1979,

there was a cooling system malfunction that caused a partial melt-down of the reactor core.

This loss-of-coolant accident resulted in the release of a significant amount of radioactivity

Three Mile Island

Three Mile IslandThe nuclear power industry claims that there

were no deaths, injuries or adverse health effects from the accident, and a report by Columbia University epidemiologist Maureen Hatch agrees with this finding.

Another study by Steven Wing of the University of North Carolina found that lung cancer and leukemia rates were 2 to 10 times higher downwind of TMI than upwind

Back to DaiichiIf you’re nuclear

rods are too hot, you need to cool them down.

What’s wrong with using seawater?

Daiichi ReactorSeawater was used to try to cool the rods.

However, seawater is highly corrosive and there was fear is could rupture the containment vessel.

The Japanese started to pump fresh water into the reactor instead.

Daiichi Nuclear ReactorQuestion, where does all of that radioactive

water go? Japan officials are now warning that groundwater

near the damaged nuclear power plant in Japan has radioactive contamination.

These officials go on to show that the radioactive material in the water is 10,000 times the government health standard.

Daiichi Nuclear ReactorDo you see another problem?

Are events local to only Japan?

USS Ronald ReaganThe nuclear-powered USS

Ronald Reagan was about 100 miles northeast of the power plant when trace amounts of radiation were detected on 17 helicopter crew members from the carrier after their aircraft flew through a radioactive plume generated by the disabled power plant. It was likely released when Japanese officials vented pressurized vapor from inside the plant to avert a meltdown.

Radiation detected in Colorado

Colorado has joined a handful of states in detecting trace amounts of radiation from Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant. The Colorado Department of Public Health (CDPHE) explained that the levels are not any cause for concern.

Seafood ExportsFear about radiation from the

nuclear power plant disaster in Japan is causing sales of seafood to dive in South Korea.

The Thai Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Friday warned that during the coming one or two weeks, seafood imports from Japan, especially small fish, are tenable to be contaminated with radiation and asked consumers to avoid those seafood.

Beef ExportsRadiation exceeding the legal limit was

detected for the first time in Japanese beef, as the fallout out from a nuclear crisis at the Fukushima nuclear plant entered its 21st day Friday.

FDA halts imports of dairy, produce from Japan

Low levels of radiation have turned up in milk samples from two U.S. states, both on the West Coast. Officials say there is no public health threat.

Traces of radioactive Iodine-131 were found in milk in California and Washington state, according to federal and state authorities who are monitoring for contamination as the nuclear crisis unfolds in Japan.

Germany and ChernobylA quarter century after

the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the Soviet Union carried a cloud of radiation across Europe, these animals are radioactive enough that people are urged not to eat them. And the mushrooms the pigs dine on aren't fit for consumption either.

Germany and ChernobylThe German boars

roam in forests nearly 950 miles (1,500 kilometers ) from Chernobyl. Yet, the amount of radioactive cesium-137 within their tissue often registers dozens of times beyond the recommended limit for consumption and thousands of times above normal.

Japan and the Price of OilIf Libya produces 2% of the world’s oil, why

haven’t oil prices jumped higher? Japanese demand for oil has dramatically

decreased due to the tsunami.Plants were closed and workers were unable to

drive Japanese demand will increase as plants come

back on line and oil is used to offset the loss of energy produced by Daiichi

Japanese RecoveryEarthquake

insurance will be the largest in history

Losses related to the tsunami could be $10 billion or higher

11,620 people dead and 16,464 others unaccounted