patrick.net

Yikes, looks like quite a lot if ending up in the sea:

[9:30 p.m. Monday ET, 10:30 a.m. Tuesday in Tokyo] High levels of radioactive substances have been found in seawater near the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, its operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Tuesday.

Levels of iodine-131 in the seawater were 126.7 times higher than government-set standards, the electric company said on its website. Its monitors detected caesium-134, which has a half-life of about two years, about 24.8 times higher than the government standards. Cesium-137 was found to be 16.5 times higher than the standard.

The electric company detected these levels in seawater 100 meters (328 feet) south of the nuclear power plant Monday afternoon. Radioactive particles disperse in the ocean, and the farther away from the shore a sample is taken, the less concentrated the contamination should be. Because of the huge amount of dilution that happens in the ocean, there's not much chance of deep-water fish being tainted, said Murray McBride, a professor at Cornell University, who studies crop and soil sciences.

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/21/japan-quake-live-blog-u-s-military-families-in-japan-to-get-iodide-pills-monday/

I'd look for this to be an ongoing problem for the coming weeks/months. And IF entombment is the ultimate solution, it could go on for much longer.

BTW, odd choice for an 'expert'... I have a great deal of respect for Ag and soil scientists, but I would have thought an oceanographer or water chemistry specialist or fisheries biologist would have been higher on the list of candidates.

Because of the huge amount of dilution that happens in the ocean, there’s not much chance of deep-water fish being tainted, said Murray McBride, a professor at Cornell University, who studies crop and soil sciences.

American in Japan says

@terriDeaner
I didn’t think you had was a selfish reason for starting this, and I live in Japan.

It has rained for 1 1/2 days now so most of the radioactive elements are coming down, especially in the Pacific Ocean near Japan and in Fukushima Prefecture. Fortunately, winds have been away from Tokyo except last Tuesday.
The cesium-137 and plutonium are more of a concern than the iodine-131 since their half lives are much longer.

Still calm but alert…
Keep the information and links coming.

Hey, thanks AiJ. Glad you found some of this information useful.

Hopefully the rain scrubs out the bulk of the particulates. Don't discount the danger of I-131 just because it has a very short half-life, though. Remember that for the short-term the trade-off it is that it has a relatively energetic and intense decay period. Also keep in mind that it is concentrated by the body into a very small area (the thyroid gland). Effectively, this means you could get a very strong acute dose in a small area of your body over a very short time period after consuming a relatively small amount of it. How small of an amount is safe? I'm not sure...

From wikipedia:

Iodine in food is absorbed by the body and preferentially concentrated in the thyroid where it is needed for the functioning of that gland. When I-131 is present in high levels in the environment from radioactive fallout, it can be absorbed through contaminated food, and will also accumulate in the thyroid.

As it decays [I-131], it may cause damage to the thyroid. The primary risk from exposure to high levels of I-131 is the chance occurrence of radiogenic thyroid cancer in later life. Other risks include the possibility of non-cancerous growths and thyroiditis.

Stay safe!

And stay away from here:

URGENT: Radiation 1,600 times normal level 20 km from Fukushima plant: IAEA
http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/03/80057.html

Thanks for the links. Just because the media has moved on to other stories, doesn't mean there isn't news to report. Keep 'em coming.

terriDeaner says

#3 and #4 both remain nasty question marks. And, as Troy pointed out earlier, the corroded pumps washed with seawater may or may not work when power is restored. I sincerely hope they will, but I have some doubts

The pumps will work just fine. They weren't washed in seawater all that long. It's the pump motor which will ideally need to be rinsed and dried out. Since this isn't an ideal situation they will most likely just try turning on one pump at one of the reactors and see if it works type of thing. My personal experience suggests that if the motor turns when first turned on and doesn't stall out or anything, the heat generated by the motor itself will dry it out much quicker than the usual way of drying out an electric motor, which usually consists of putting a space heater next to it and then a tarp over the whole thing and letting it sit for a couple of days (longer times needed for bigger motors to dry out). In fact at one plant I used to wkr out that's how we sometimes stored bigger electric motors (ones way bigger than these coolant pump motors). It's not like there is only one motor in these cooling systems, I'm guessing that there are at least 3, so trying out the just turning one on if it looks OK is a reasonable method to see if it works in this situation. of course, under normal circumstances where you would have the luxury of time, you would dry out the motor and then do some testing on it (without powering it up) before you would actually try to use it.

Tsunami picture that I just found:

I saw that scene in an aerial photo. Pretty fucked up.

The rain has stopped. As bad as is might be, Fukushima has it much worse. I've estimated he wind only has blown (from Fukushima) toward Tokyo /Kanagawa only 15% of the time. It has blown toward the Pacific Ocean 2/3 of the time and the rest toward Miyagi/Iwate/Akita/Yamagata, etc.

Good story about the difference in media coverage on the earthquake/tsunami/nuclear plant:

http://www.japantoday.com/category/have-your-say/view/what-would-you-say-are-the-same-of-the-main-differences-in-the-way-the-japanese-and-foreign-media-are-covering-the-aftermath-of-the-march-11-earthquake-and-tsunami-and-the-ongoing-nuclear-crisis#show_all_comments

Thanks for the update AiJ. Most of the major western news sources have moved on to covering the Libyan invasion. Please be selective in what you eat:

From bloomberg:

Five kinds of radioactive materials released by damaged fuel rods were detected in the sea, including iodine-131, cesium-134 and cobalt, according to Tepco. Radiation in food is measured in Becquerel, a gauge of the strength of radioactivity in those materials. The prescribed safe limit for I-131 in vegetables is set at 2,000 Becquerel (Bq) per kilogram and 500 Bq/kg for radioactive cesium.

“A person would really have to continue to eat that food grown locally that’s contaminated,” he said.

Do you have a substantial choice in what foods are available to you?

American in Japan says

Good story about the difference in media coverage on the earthquake/tsunami/nuclear plant:

Thanks for the link. Quite a range of opinions there.

Ironically food from China may be healthier than from here for the time being!

And this info I found out about various elements:

in the reactor, the zirconium alloy fuel cladding starts to fail at 1200 C (cesium-137 and iodine-131 are in the fuel cladding-gap region of the fuel rods, so when the cladding fails these are also released, and hydrogen builds up when the cladding reacts with hot steam)
the uranium fuel itself starts to melt at 3204 C.