Japan Nuke Plant Nears Destructive Meltdown

 

This is a screenshot from Russia TV.  I saw this same refinery/gas plant earlier and only a few things were burning but tonight it is totally being destroyed.  But far worse is the nuclear power plant’s woes.  Japan is one of the most geologically active places on earth and naturally, has been a big builder of nuclear power plants some of which are right on top of fault lines.  There is no way to put out the fire in this petro facility.  And water is in short supply at the nuclear power plants which are right on the coastline infamous for tsunami events.

It looks like WWII  in Japan tonight.  After a huge dousing with gigagallons of ocean water, we now see entire cities burning down.  My heart goes out to all the people in these cities!  It is heartwrenching, watching all of this, knowing that in the streets far below the satellite that took these pictures, there are screaming people, desperately trying to save each other and save themselves:  Video: Entire Japanese city on fire after earthquake – Telegraph

• Kesennuma city, located 300 miles north east of Tokyo in Miyagi prefecture, was near the epicentre of the magnitude 8.9 earthquake. Night time aerial footage shows large swathes of the city, home to 74,000 people, on fire.

 

Here is a Google Earth shot of the city in flames from before the destruction:

Here is a random shot of a neighborhood in this small city, before the earthquake/tsunami/firestorm:

In the picture below is the main hospital, probably in flames right now.

A shot of the harbor before the dreadful event:

Apocalyptic scenes everywhere tonight.  In addition, the Evil Genie in a very hot lamp is threatening to emerge and destroy.  Only Japan has been nuked in the past.  Will it happen again, via a tsunami?  The nuclear reactors in question are on the coast, built on the east coast facing one of the world’s most dangerous subduction zones.  They were built there right in the path of any major tsunami because there is unlimited water to cool the reactors.  This is what is now failing.

Japan tsunami and earthquake – live coverage | World news | guardian.co.uk

 

• Fukushima Daiichi (No 1) plant

 

• – has six reactors, three of which were shut down for maintainence. Two of the remaining reactors, Unit 1 has significant problems with a rising temperature and in another the operator says it has lost cooling ability.

 

• – the Unit 1 reactor has seen radiation levels inside its control room rise, and slightly higher radiation levels have been detected outside the reactor. Pressure inside the reactor is twice the normal level, and the operator has been forced to vent radioactive vapor to relieve the pressure.

 

• Fukushima Daini (No 2) plant

 

• – has four reactors, and in units 1, 2 and 4 of them the operator has said it has lost cooling ability.

 

• – Tepco says pressure is stable inside the reactors of the Daini plant but rising in the containment vessels.

 

• • Both plants have been declared to be in a state of emergency by the government, and residents moved outside of a 10km zone around both plants.

As usual, I go visit the website of these facilities.  Yes, they have an online presence.  What I found there doesn’t give me much hope these things are run by sane people.  No, in that queer spiritual state of perpetual denial so indigenous to the Japanese bureaucrats, the web page is a mess:  http://www.tepco.co.jp/nuclear/programs/nustat-j.html.  It does have some maps of sorts.  We can see all of the facilities are right dead center with the most destructive parts of the Sendai earthquake event:

 

Built from 1971-1980 by General Electric and then by Toshiba and then Hitachi, these are not state-of-the-art modern facilities.  When they were designed, the concept of tectonic plate movements was just barely beginning to be debated by egghead geologists!  Tsunamis were regarded as random events, bolts out of the blue.  The idea that there was this terrible gash deep in the ocean right off Japan that was a ‘subduction zone’ was barely known by virtually anyone on earth, perhaps, the import of all of this geology was understood by a dozen people.

At the Tepco website, they invite us to ‘Click here for recent updates on status of these nuclear power plants’:  TEPCO : 移転しました.  This is what we get:

Good lord.  They are running one of the biggest power plants to potentially blow up!  And to get updated information…forget about it!  Nothing!  This is literally criminal.  Of course, the blundering government of Japan that ignores reality steadfastly is not going to prosecute these guys.  Anymore than British Petroleum was prosecuted recently, here.

Here is a map showing other nuclear power plants in Japan:  Modern Survival Blog – surviving uncertain times

This diagram of the reactor’s system shows how water is gathered from the ocean and pumped into the plant.  Of course, they are saying that tonight that the problem is the BATTERIES (!!!!) are running out, there is no electricity (and obviously no generators?) but I suspect that the ocean destroyed the intake pumps and systems.  Perhaps there is a strong reality that the intake pump doesn’t exist anymore.  Look at this photo from the company’s webpage to see how much water gushes back out from the plant:

Perhaps parts of the buildings are now on fire tonight.  It would not surprise me at all.  Here is an old news story which I commented on (shaking my head in horror) from just four years ago:  Japan Earthquake Rattles World’s Largest Nuclear Power Plant

 

• TOKYO, Japan, July 16, 2007 (ENS) – An earthquake with a magnitude of 6.8 jolted a wide area on the west coast of Honshu Island this morning, killing nine people, and injuring more than 900 others. The quake caused the world’s largest nuclear power plant to leak radioactive water into the sea, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency and company and emergency officials.

 

• Four of the seven reactors at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power station were operating or set to begin operation when the earthquake struck. They automatically shut down when the earth began to shake, but an electric transformer outside one of the reactors caught fire and burned for about two hours.

The Russians claim, these two plants are much bigger than Chernobyl.  If so, we can understand why the clueless cretins running Japan say wistfully, that they hope ocean breezes will move the results eastwards, not over Japan.

That is, over Hawaii and then California and on across the US.  Our wonderful allies hard at work again.  Or maybe cosmic revenge on the US.  Either way, this is very disturbing and obviously, the solution to our energy needs has to take into account geological reality.  No matter what we look at, we are at the mercy of great geological reality forces.  Making up stuff won’t stop reality from hammering us.

All choices are Hobson’s choices: they all have some rather hideous downsides.  It doesn’t matter what we use, since we began using fire, we have changed the planet and endangered ourselves repeatedly.  This is literally ‘playing with fire’ and one has to ponder the trap we set ourselves in: we left behind common evolution and instead of growing lots of fur like say, Mastodons, we built fires during the first Ice Ages.  On and on it goes: our search for power, our use of power and our self-destruction from all of this.

The fires destroying the Japanese towns and cities tonight were lit by gas lines breaking.  When California has its 8.9 mag event (nearly inevitable) in Southern California, it will be just like Japan including many out of control fires.  No way around this at all.

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